Acknowledging requests is a matter of good customer service. However, if the request is simple to deal with and you can respond fully in a short period of time, you may feel that acknowledging the request prior to responding is unnecessary. However, where a response is likely to take more time to prepare, for instance in the more complex cases, you should acknowledge the request prior to providing the full response.
It is important that requests are logged for management monitoring purposes. Whilst there is no requirement in the Act to produce statistics of the number or type of requests received, or indeed to keep a log of requests, public authorities will find that it is good business practice to keep a log. Central Government departments are committed to collecting monitoring data.
Collected data may be used for three main purposes:
Logging requests is also important in recognising the incidence of repetitious requests. Care should therefore be taken to ensure that internal tracking and logging procedures are developed to capture this data. Your departmental FOI unit should have processes in place to log and track requests.
It is therefore important that public authorities develop procedures to capture sufficient data. In some public authorities it may be appropriate to use an IT tracking system. More information on developing tracking systems and a generic user specification can be found at http://www.foi.gov.uk/implement.htm. The specification has been designed to assist central government departments and agencies in their preparations for implementing the Act but it may also be useful for other public authorities. The DCA does not accredit software designed to track FOI and EIR requests.
The Act obliges you to respond:
If the request is not for you to deal with but for someone else within your authority e.g. another division or business unit, you must pass on the request immediately to ensure that the time limit can be complied with. The deadline for the reply is calculated from the time the request was received in any part of the Department. You must let the person responsible for logging/tracking FOI requests know that you have passed the request on. It is also best practice to let the requestor know who is dealing with their request - see suggested standard paragraphs.
The obligation is to reply promptly and not more than 20 working days following receipt. You should not delay until the end of the 20 day period if there is no reason why the information cannot be provided earlier.
'Working Days' are all days except Saturdays and Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday, and Bank Holidays anywhere in the UK as set out in the Banking and Financial Services Act 1971.
It should be noted that Civil Service 'privilege days' do count as working days. If your office is closed for a privilege day this should be built into the timetable for response.
The Act makes a limited number of provisions for extra time to be taken in responding to a request.
The Act provides that public authorities are not required to comply with expensive requests.
If it would cost more than £600 for a public authority to respond to an FOI request, then an authority need not comply with it. The £600 limit covers the time taken to find, sort, edit or redact material. It does not cover the time taken to consider whether an exemption applies and the public interest test. A different upper limit of £450 applies for public authorities outside central government. Further guidance will be given on calculating the costs of complying with requests for the purposes of applying this cost ceiling.
Complying with requests which would cost more than this ceiling is discretionary.
For requests which would cost less than the ceiling, no standard fee may be charged, but you can charge the full cost of disbursements (photocopying, printing and posting).